Mary Frances Davidson was born in 1905 in Middlesboro, KY, into a family of third generation spinners and weavers.  She remembered her grandmother who "spun on the high wheel" and "wove 'jane." 

Davidson attended West Virginia University during the early 1930s receiving a degree in education concentrating on mathematics, social science, and French.  In 1941 she completed her Master's Degree in Education at Duke University.  She taught math at White Silver Springs High School in West Virginia for 10 years, then in 1944 moved to Oak Ridge, TN, to continue her teaching career.

Also in 1944 Davidson studied weaving at Berea College and Penland School of Crafts.  But it was Fannie McLellan's course in natural dyeing at John C. Campbell Folk School in 1948 that inspired and stirred Davidson when she saw great hanks of yarn in lovely soft glowing colors draped over a loom.  Davidson recalled, "That was the vision of color that was never erased from my mind.  The bug bit me."

Besides her public school teaching Davidson became a faculty member at Arrowmont School of Crafts in vegetable dyeing in1965.  This continued from 1967 to 1983.  She led her students on field trips to gather dyeing materials, which were used to produce yarns, and create notebooks full of recipes.  She taught numberous dyeing workshops across the country including Michigan, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida as well as in her home state of Tennessee.  In 1972 she dyed fibers for woven upholstery yardage u sed for a couch at the 1787 Gunston Hall, the historic Virginia home of colonist and Constitution signer George Mason.  In that same year she participated in the International Art Program of the US Information Agency.  Numerous books and articles have included her craft insights.

In 1950 wrote the booklet The Dye Pot.  The dedication reads, "To Mother, who never fussed if the sink was stained."  Based on Davidson's research and experimentation, the book promoted the "fun of picking blossoms and gathering leaves from your own yard to see what you get."  The booklet, reprinted in 1961 and 1974, sold over 30,000 copies.

From her home in the mountains near Galtlinbrug, Davidson created her dye recipes using berries, plants, tree barks and roots.  Her colors were exceptiona.  As writer cynthia Russ Ramsey sayd, "The tumble of small hanks in tones of gold, green, purple, pink, and beige offered a feast for the eyes."  Each year Davidson spun and dyed about 400 pounds of yarn.  She sold her yarns at Arrocraft for weavers and knitters.  From 1949 to 2002, as a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, she demonstrated dyeing at Guild Fairs and Fiber Day.  She received Life Membership in 1972 and continued with the Guild until her death in 2002.  She was 97 years old. 

In 1995 Arrowmont honored her at their 50th anniversary as a pioneer in extending the knowledge of native dyes and materials.  Sandra Blain,a SHCG member and former Director of Arrowmont said of Davidson, "She is one of the world's foremost authorities on vegetable dyeing and has alsways been willing to share her experiences and knowledge with others."   

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library. 

     

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library. 

 Goingback Chiltoskey, known as G.B., was born on the Cherokee Qualla Boundary in 1907.  He learned woodcarving from his brother Watty and then participated in the woodworking program during high school in Greenville, SC.  In the later 1920s and early 1930s he completed high school and studied carpentry at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, KS, now the Haskell Indian Nations University.  He went on to attend the U.S. Indian School, later known as the Institute of Ameircan Indian Art, focusing on jewelry from 1933 - 1935.  Throughout his life, Chiltoskey continued to study crafts at Penland School of Crafts, Oklahoma A and M Univeristy, Purdue University, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Between 1935 and 1940, Chiltoskey taught woodworking and carving at the Cherokee HIgh School.  He also tutored his niece, Amanda Crowe, who eventually became a nationally recognized wood sculptor.  During World War II, Chiltoskey became a model maker for the Army Research and Development Laboratories in Fort Belvoir, VA.  After the war he continued making models for movie sets and architects and then returned to the Qualla Boundary to teach veterans.  From 1954 to 1966 he continued model building for Fort Belvoir.

Chiltoskey joined the Guild in 1948 and participated in fair demsontrations, exhibitions and booth sales from the 1950s through the 1980s.  He was the first active tribal member of the Guild.  He served on the Board of Trustees and the Standards Committee and demonstrated at the Folk Art Center.  He received Life Membership to the Guild in 1972 and continued active participation until his death in 2000.  Chiltoskey was one of the founders of Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., the tribal craft cooperative and gallery.

Cherokee heritage was important to G.B. and his wife, Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey.  Mary wrote several books on Cherokee culture, language, and storytelling as well as native plants.  She taught mathematics and social studies and was the librarian at the Cherokee School from 1942 to 1967.  Mary also taught the Cherokee language and the alphabet.  Goingback and Mary were fluent in Cherokee.  Goingback was also a tribal blow gun champion.

Goingback used native woods such as cherry, buckeye, walnut, holly and apple in his carving.  He carved significant tribal images such as the Eagle Dancer and the tribal seal.  He also created numerous animal figures including geese, howling wolves, cougars, bears, weasels, dog, giraffes, birds and buffalo.  He received commissions to create many wooden emblem plaques for government agencies, a scale model of the battleship North Carolina, a bust of Zebulon Vance, and Lady Justice for Campbell University.  Chiltoskey also continued to create jewelry, particularly silver rings with stones and belt buckles.  He made Mary's wedding ring and a special brooch for her.

Chiltoskey received the North Carolina Art Society Purchase Prize in 1953 for his carving, the Great Horned Owl.  In 1974 he accepted the Western North Carolina Historical Association Achievement Award.  He acquired the 1982 award for service to the North American Indian Women's Association.  He received an Honorary Live Membership in the International Wood Collector's Society.      

 

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library. 

Fannie Rebekah Mennen was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1903, child of Rabbi Ephraim Mennen and Naomi Atlas Mennen.  She arrived in Chattanooga, TN, at eight months old when her father was asked to lead the oldest synagogue in the city.  When she was a year old she contracted polio and suffered multiple surgeries in her youth leaving her disabled.

Mennen attended George Peabody College for an education and music degree in 1929.  In 1945 she completed studies at Columbia University to receive a Master's degree in art teaching.  She studied art in night school and summer sessions at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the University of Cincinnati.  She was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1953 to travel to Haiti.  She taught art in public schools in Chattanooga for thirty years, then retired in 1961 to pursue her own craft.

She moved to her Plum Nelly home, two log cabins joined by a dogtrot, and acreage on a rocky bluff of Lookout Mountain, Georgia, on the southwestern edge of Chattanooga in 1934, buying land over time with her teacher's salary.  It took years to remodel her home.  She based the home's name on the expression "Plum out of Tennessee and Nelly out of Georgia."

Mennen practiced print making and was well known for her block printed trapunto pillows with images stuffed and quilted adding a three-dimensional effect.  She gouged and cut both woodcuts and linoleum blocks and mixed her own dyes preferring black, brown, orange and green.  she also produced note cards, wall hangings, and tote bags.  Her designs included wildflowers, trees, and Appalachian animals.  She also used Mimbres, the cartoonish black animal figures on white pottery from Pre-Columbian Southwestern Indian pottery.  Her love of paper compelled her at times to print on up to twenty varieties of paper.

In 1947 Mennen and sponsored the Plum Nelly Clothes Line Art Show at her home.  The show attracted over thirty fellow artists in painting, jewelry, wood carving, print making, pottery, weaving and other arts.  It was staged on her property, up a winding road in grassy meadows and under tree branches, with trails of wood chips.  Over 18,000 customers attended the show which continued for 27 years into the 1970s.

Mennen became a member of 12 Designer Craftsmen, a cooperative gallery in Gatlinburg, TN.  Her work also sold through her sister, Mrs. Celia Marks, at her Plum Nelly Shop in Chattanooga.  Mennen entered the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 1959, often demonstrated at the Craft Fairs, and became a life member in 1983 until her death in 1995.  She also demonstrated print making at Callaway Gardens, GA, in 1976 through Guild sponsorship.  Mennen voiced her love of teaching and sharing art, "I discovered I could bring art out of other people."       

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library. 

Isadora Williams at the October 1965 Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands

Born in 1884, Isadora Williams lived at her grandfather Benajah Williams farm in Pickens County, SC, near Easley.  She attended a public pay school three to seven months per year in Liberty Township and attended high school through the ninth grade.  Typical for teachers of the times, her first teaching job from 1903 - 1904 was in a two-teacher school in Anderson County while she lived on the family farm.  Between 1904 and 1908 she attended Winthrop College in Rock Hill, SC.  After college, Williams continued to teach in southern Carolina primary and secondary schools until 1918.

Following a decade of Populist pressure, the Smith-Lever Extension Act passed in 1914 creating a national Agricultural Extension Service for rural residents.  Federally sponsored state colleges of agriculture extended programs into the countyside educating men in farming and women in home economics and housekeeping.  The Act funded 2000 Home Demonstration Agents to train housewives.  In 1919 Isadora Williams became one of the first Home Demonstration Agents and served Geneva County, Alabama.  Williams continued her work with women through Agricultural Extension at various sites in Alabama and Kentucky until 1930 when she became a Home Marketing Specialist through the  Extension office at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Williams' new position as a Home Marketing Specialist, which continued until 1954, inspired her to experiment with the new concept of curbside and roadside markets.  This new outlet for farm women stimulated them to create a wide range of crafts for selling at these markets.  Rural women were prepared to sell their garden produce and home canned preserves, jams and jellies, but crafts offered the opportunity to increase their income.  To fill this need, Williams taught classes in natural materials crafts, block printing, rug hooking and braiding, and tufting.  She wrote numerous agency bulletins and circulars on various "how-to" processes in native materials, home furnishings, and apparel.

Williams joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 1943 after attending meetings since 1932.  She was elected to the Board and served from 1944 through 1947 as Secretary.  She coordinated publicity for the first Guild Fair in 1948 and exhibited many of her rugs at the shows.  Williams was awarded Life Membership in 1964.  She continued as an active member doing numerous workshops and classes until her death in 1976.

While exposing rural women to income producing crafts, Williams explored her own interest in crafts.  Through her Home Demonstration work, she taught outdoor workshops where women gathered natural dyeing materials and boiled yarn in huge metal kettles.  She experimented with rug making through weaving, hooking, tufting, and braiding.  She worked with corn shucks, pine cones, nuts, and seeds creating boutonnieres, natural ornamental arrangements,and "Woods Pretties" of which she sold thousands.  She helped establish the "Woodsy Pretties" workshop when two farm women wanted to decorate shuck hats they had made.  They gathered beech nuts, hickory nuts and peanuts, bored holes in them, and strung them into bouquets to adorn the hats.

When a rural farm woman nostalgically recalled her grandmother's shuck doll that she had played with as a child, Williams aided her in recreating it.  That doll was sold as "Mollie." In the first year "Mollie" sold in 23 states and three foreign countries.         

 

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library.

The members of the Martin family of Swannanoa, NC were known for their talents as Appalachian wood carvers and musicians.  Marcus L. Martin, the father, carved scrolls on violins, built dulcimers and banjos, and was a champion fiddler in North Carolina.  His wife, Callie, played the five-string banjo.  The couple had five children: a daughter named Zenobia and five sons, Fred, Quentin, Wade, Wayne and Edsel.  Fred made dulcimers.  Wayne carved.  Quentin crafted furniture and played the guitar.  Edsel and Wade excelled at wood carving.  Edsel and Wade both made great contributions to the craft community as members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild.

Mountaineer Carving by Edsel Martin

Edsel Martin was born in 1927.  After being wounded in World War II he started marketing his carvings in 1946.  Edsel carved figures, birds, fish, dogs, snakes and rabbits.  His carvings were worked in walnut, cherry, redwood, white pine and maple.  His major tool was a pocket knife.  Like his father Edsel also made dulcimers, completing 175 by 1965.  He was an expert dulcimer player and made several recordings.  Edsel's wife Elsie was also a craftsperson.  She carved maple flowers, roosters and pine trees, shaving curls of wood to create petals, feathers, and tree limbs.

Edsel joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 1962 and became a Life Member in 1991.  He maintained an active membership until his death in 1999.  He exhibited and demonstrated at the Craft Fairs for thirty years and participated at Folk Art Center special events such as Heritage Weekend occasionally.  The Smithsonian Institute selected Edsel to demonstrate at the 1968 Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C.  That same year he participated in the History of Transportation at Hemisfair in San Antonio, TX.  In 1965, he created a dulcimer which was presented to Lady Bird Johnson, and a collection of state birds for the Smithsonian Institute.  In 1986, Edsel provided carved gifts for the Southern Governor's Conference.  

Wade Martin served as an Army paratrooper in the Pacific during World War II.  During his service in the Philippines, he met a wood carver and borrowed his knife.  According to Wade, after borrowing the knife he went out to an old Japanese barge with a machete, knocked off a chunk of wood and started carving.  His first piece was a three to four inch hula girl.  His second carving was of his father as and old time fiddler.  He continued whittling mountain characters, including musicians, moon shiners, wood choppers, women washing clothes, hog butchers and boys fishing.  Wade's best known figure was "Lazybones," a mountaineer propped against a stump relaxing.  He also carved hounds with every wrinkle and tendons showing through the flesh.  Like his father and brother he also made dulcimers from time to time.  Wade worked in the offset printing shop at Beacon Manufacturing in Swannonoa, NC later in life.

Old Time Band Carving by Wade Martin

Wade was a member of the Guild from 1951 until 1963 and demonstrated wood carving at the Craft Fairs.  His carvings attracted numerous admirers at Allanstand Craft Shop and other Asheville outlets.  In 2000, the Guild designated Wade Martin as a Heritage Craft Affiliate member.  He died in 2005.

In 1986, Wade created a scrapbook, "Swannanoa's Wood Carving Mountaineer Style" which chronicled his family's crafts.  The book includes Wade's sketches, as well as stories, clippings, photographs, sayings and humor.  It revealed that Wade Martin's creativity extended beyond wood carving.  A play, Woodcarvers Christmas, was adapted from the book by Rebecca Williams and produced in 2003 - 2004.       

On Saturday, April 21, 2012 the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Southern Highland Craft Guild was held at the Folk Art Center.  The following people were honored during the Awards Ceremony:

Honorary Membership

Anthony Cole

Karol Kavaya

Walter Powell

Heritage Craft Affiliate

Brown's Pottery

Wayne Henderson

Life Membership

Carlson Tuttle

In Memoriam

Kitty Alcott

Garry Barker

Evelyn Brown

Phillip Brown

Joyce Cooper

Lenda DuBose

Jim Hiett

Hal McClure

Ralph Morris

Roy K. Pace

Dyan Peterson

Miriam Thompson

Legatha Walston

Sally Wilkerson

The New Board of Trustees was also announced at the Annual Meeting.  The 2012 - 2013 Members of the Board are:

Teresa Brittain, President
Oak Ridge, TN

Alan Hollar, Vice President
Newland, NC  

Freida Terrell, Treasurer
Clyde, NC

Mary Dashiell, Secretary
Meadows of Dan, VA 

Hugh Bailey
Knoxville, TN  

Sandra Rowland
Murphy, NC  

Janet Taylor (finishing out the remaining 2 years of Lila Bellando's term)
Spruce Pine, NC  

Greg Magruder
Asheville, NC  

Bernie Rowell
Candler, NC

Alice Pratt hosts a weaving demonstration at the 1957 SHCG Craftsmen's Fair

Alice Pratt: A Life of Weaving and Service

Editor's Note: This post is the second in a series called "From the Archives" - a look back at the people who served and helped shape the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The author of the series is Bonnie Krause. Bonnie works at Allanstand Craft Shop and volunteers in the
SHCG Library.

Alice Pratt was born in Covington, GA in 1899. Following in the footsteps of several generations before her, she would become a talented weaver. Her grandmother and great grandmother wove counterpanes and coverlets in the early nineteenth century. She attended Maryville College in Tennessee, taking studies in home economics and the Bible from 1925 to 1929 where she also taught tailoring. After college she took a position at Pi Beta Phi Settlement School in Gatlinburg where she worked as a bookkeeper for the weaving outreach program. Continuing in the family tradition, Pratt developed her weaving skills there in Gatlinburg. As reported in an Asheville Citizen-Times article about Pratt, "Her love of weaving is a family inheritance."

With the economic troubles of the Depression, Pratt found a position from 1933 to 1937 teaching weaving in the Works Progress Administration Women's Program in Knoxville. This was one of the many programs aimed at increasing unemployed women's skills and helping them find work to support their families. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1936, nearly 1,000 women worked seven hours a day, five days a week at a sewing room on West Jackson Avenue . They created cotton dresses, overalls, infant and children's clothing. The women earned $33 a month and the clothing was distributed to those in need. Some women made quilts and others wove rag rugs, linens and draperies. They also learned additional skills in family and childcare, health and literacy. At an exhibition of products from the Women's Program, Pratt participated by demonstrating loom weaving. One of her students later wrote , "I have you to thank for one of the great joys of my life. We built a loom and began learning and have never stopped."

Following her work in Knoxville, Pratt advanced to Regional Supervisor of Handicrafts for the Farm Security Administration Homestead Project with headquarters in Raleigh, NC. The Homestead Project created new communities for unemployed and homeless families and taught new skills. From 1938 to 1940, Pratt set up craft rooms, gift shops, working 2 - 3 months at each site. She worked in Crossville and Cumberland in Tennessee, Eleanor in West Virginia, and Wolf Pit Farms and Rockingham in North Carolina. During this time, Pratt met with Eleanor Roosevelt, a supporter of crafts and new communities.

Through the late 1940s to the 1960s, Pratt taught weaving in a variety of educational settings: University of Tennessee Home Economics, Asheville College, Warren Wilson College and the Asheville Recreation Department. After studies in social work at the University of North Carolina, she served as a caseworker and therapist at the Asheville Sanatorium and Appalachian Hall. She also taught crafts for paraplegic World War II veterans at the Regional Veterans Center in Asheville.

Throughout her life Pratt attended summer school weaving classes at Penland School of Crafts. She joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 1942 and received Life Membership in 1978. She served on the 1945 Guild incorporation board, the nomination committee, and the craft fair exhibitions committee. She continued weaving until her death in 1990.

Alice Pratt dedicated her weaving studies to traditional work, saving weaving drafts in an album for coverlet and counterpane designs, including family drafts dating back to the 1830s. Her contemporary weaving included napkins, towels, placemats and runners. She donated numerous samples of her work as well as family counterpanes to the Southern Highland Craft Guild's Permanent Collection.

Alice Pratt looks on during a weaving demonstration at the 1961 SHCG Craftsmen's Fair